As Wide as the Sky

by Jessica Pack

  Amanda closed her eyes in the darkened bedroom and let the memory of that final meeting wash over her. He’d been so lucid, so . . . Robbie. He’d been allowed to walk her to the door of the private visitation room, where two guards had stood on both sides of him the whole time. They stopped at the threshold. She looked into those clear blue eyes and said, “I love you, Robbie. So very much.”

  Tears filled his eyes again, and the tattoos and beard melted away until he was for that moment the young man he’d once been. Just Robbie. Just her son. “I love you, too, Mom.”

  When Amanda had returned home from that final prison visit, the emotions had been churning like the paddles on a river boat. She would never see her son again. He would die without her and she would go on living, such as her life was.

  Without Robbie nearby she had no reason to stay in South Dakota, and so she had returned from that last visit and immersed herself in packing up seventeen years of life she’d lived in this house. For the most part, the work had kept her from thinking about the fact that even though he would live another three days behind steel and concrete walls, she would never see her son again.

  Those three days were over now. The thing she’d lived for—to be Robbie’s mother—was gone. Dead. Finished. The blockade she’d kept against feeling and being and having room for anything but him was no longer necessary. And she knew she could not “live” if she continued to hide behind that defense. She took a deep breath, then let it out while some of the numbness she’d held close seeped through the mattress to the floor and into the frozen ground beneath the house. It was done. Robbie was gone. Pounding sorrow in her head and chalky regret thick in her chest.

  Peace?

  Not yet.

  Had his death brought peace to those people he’d damaged so much—those who had loved the innocent shoppers who died at his hand? Would knowing that the monster Robert Mallorie no longer breathed help them to heal? Could Mrs. Hansen find peace now?

  With all her might Amanda hoped that each of those people devastated by what Robbie had done woke up this morning with less hurt in their hearts, a lighter burden on their shoulders. It was harder to hope that she might feel the same. They deserved peace; did she?

  Amanda pushed back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed as she sat up. The air of a new life moved in and out of her lungs with each breath. She brushed her hair to the side and looked at the digital clock. It was 5:32 in the morning of the first day.

  2

  Darryl

  Three hours, two minutes

  Darryl gripped the coffee cup tighter and lifted it to his mouth with shaking hands. He kept his eyes glued on the TV above the counter of the greasy spoon he’d happened to be in front of when he realized he couldn’t go to the office like this was a normal day. And he couldn’t go home after the fight with Clara. “This is not the life I want to live anymore, Darryl,” she’d said last night when he’d told her he wouldn’t be able to make it to Riley’s play—it was the last night of the three-night play and Riley was just a sunflower. Darryl could make a thousand dollars and impress the partners, or sit in a school gym and wish he were making a thousand dollars and impressing the partners. Clara had been furious. “Maybe you can pencil in some time to find an apartment, then.”

  He’d left, letting the door shake the walls of their new house in Shindler, one of the upscale housing areas of Sioux Falls. The house reflected how far he’d come in his career and had all the features Clara had wanted: six bedrooms, six baths, a huge family room, fully automated lights and alarm system, wraparound deck, formal dining room, central vac, double ovens, gas and electric cooktops. The whole house was essentially run by an app on their phones. The schools were good and the address was better. Everything about it confirmed that he’d made good on all the goals he’d set for his life. Except in regard to his marriage; specifically, his wife, who seemed to have forgotten that this was the lifestyle she’d dreamed of too. Now she wanted him home and involved with the kids, but she sure didn’t mind spending the money he earned by not being home. She didn’t mind the monthly trips to the hairdresser, infinite lunch dates, and new shoes anytime she was in the mood. Clara was spoiled, that’s what she was, and ungrateful and judgmental and cold. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d reached for her in the dark when she hadn’t shaken off his touch.

  Listing his wife’s deficiencies could only distract him for so long, however. The TV drew his attention back and the shaking in his hands reminded him.

  I watched a man die today.

  Darryl set the cup on the saucer, clattering the dishes against each other. The waitress looked in his direction and came toward him with the coffeepot.

  “A little early to have that much coffee in you, isn’t it?” The waitress had a nose ring and spiked black hair. He wondered what her father did for a living as she topped off his cup. He smiled politely, but his eyes stayed on the TV. There was no sound, just footage of the protesters waving signs and giving silent interviews outside the prison. They looked so angry. Did they come out for these protests because they truly believed that capital punishment was wrong, or because they were naturally angry people looking for a reason to vent their rage? Did Darryl believe capital punishment was wrong? Did he feel differently now that he’d watched it happen?

  He fixed his eyes on the countertop and was transported back to the witness section of the Death Room, where he’d been escorted at 1:30 this morning. By the time they opened the curtain that had covered the glass partition, Robert Mallorie was already strapped onto the gurney, with an IV in his left arm and another tube disappearing into the waistband of his prison-issued jumpsuit—it would be for the main IV in his femoral artery. The tube in his arm was just backup. Mallorie was ready to die, welcomed it even.

  Darryl had been running through his daily to-do list until that curtain opened. The rest of Mallorie’s defense team had been unable to make it. In an instant Darryl had gone from feeling heroic for representing the firm, to wondering why he hadn’t been able to find an excuse to skip this too. Darryl was the newest member of the team working for Robert Mallorie, who was going to be dead before Darryl stood up from his chair—he wouldn’t lodge a complaint about not having his attorneys present. The other witnesses in the room were associated with the victims and had whispered to one another as they’d looked through the glass. Darryl was the only person there on Mallorie’s behalf, but he’d only come to show the firm how dedicated he was to their clients. He was partner material—could there be any doubt?

  Mallorie had been calm, maybe even relieved as he stared at the ceiling. Thick leather wrist and ankle straps held down his hands and feet; another strap crossed his upper arms and chest, and a final strap stretched across his thin hips. Darryl had been told that Mallorie had lost nearly forty pounds since coming to prison, but because Darryl had only known him the last year he looked the same to him—thin but muscular, with a bushy beard that made him look like the guys on that Alaskan wilderness show. He shaved his head, which kept his facial tattoos easy to see. Darryl had never asked what the green-blue markings meant. He hadn’t wanted to know but realized that no one would ever know now.

  The prison official asked Mallorie if he had any last words, and he stared at the ceiling as he said the words he’d rehearsed with another member of the firm. “I offer my sincerest apologies to the victims and their families.” He’d wanted a longer final statement, but whatever Mallorie said would be picked apart in the press, so after considering a dozen different paragraphs that included regret and apology and maybe a little self-indulgent hope for forgiveness, they’d decided on something short and simple. The agreed-to statement sounded cold and dismissive now, though. Maybe a man’s last words shouldn’t be scripted and Mallorie should have said what he wanted to say. Darryl had looked around the Death Room to see if any of the witnesses were affected by the words. Amid the shaking heads and narrowed eyes, he hadn’t been able to gauge any positive reaction. />
  Darryl looked from the diner’s TV to the leather satchel at his feet. On the way out of the prison Darryl had been handed the bag of Mallorie’s personal effects—a book and some photos and . . . a letter to Mallorie’s mom. Darryl had still been trying not to show how the execution had affected him as he took the plastic bag and put it in his briefcase. He’d have to return the items to Amanda. Would he go in person? The idea made him feel woozy, as though it were whiskey instead of coffee he was drinking this early in the day. How could he look at her after what he’d just witnessed? It isn’t your fault her son died today, he told himself. You did everything you could to help him. But did Darryl help him? Even a little? Had he thought of Mallorie as a man or just a task to check off his list?

  Mallorie’s crimes had earned him an automatic death penalty sentence in South Dakota—a man couldn’t gun down a kid and a security guard and holiday shoppers and not get the death penalty—but his attorneys had still fought for fair treatment in prison and his rights to psychiatric care. There was nothing for Darryl to regret about the work he’d done on this case he’d joined only fifteen months ago. But the man had been killed right in front of Darryl, and Darryl was not okay. His hands were shaking. His thoughts were scattering. He couldn’t talk himself out of the fear and dread he felt. He wanted to curl up with his knees to his chest like a little kid.

  Darryl had slid into the driver’s seat of his imported sports car in the prison’s parking lot and wanted Clara’s arms around him in the worst way. He had wanted to be back in the dumpy apartment they’d rented when he was finishing law school, when the best part of his day was going home to his wife and talking about the future. How was it that he was now in that future and . . . miserable and scared?

  Back in that dumpy apartment they hadn’t talked about how his work would one day include fourteen-hour days, six days a week, and golfing with clients on Sunday afternoons. They hadn’t talked about Clara taking the kids to school and lessons and school and lessons all day every day—Darryl didn’t even know what lessons the kids had. Karate for Joseph, he thought. Did Rose still dance? They hadn’t imagined that one day he would suggest Clara start shopping at higher-end stores and maybe get a boob job so she looked more like the other attorneys’ wives. Never fathomed that when he presented her with a trip to Europe, she would tell him she would rather he just come home for dinner a few nights a week. He’d blown up at her. She’d blown right back at him and slept in the guest room. That was three weeks ago and he’d been waiting for her to apologize ever since. She hadn’t apologized and then, last night, when he’d told her he wouldn’t be able to make it to Riley’s play, she’d said that she was considering divorce. Last night, the words had pissed him off. Today, they terrified him. He couldn’t see such a radically altered future. She loves me, he said to himself and he knew, just as surely as he knew Robert Mallorie was dead, that it was true. Clara still loved him. But she had told him to leave anyway. That’s how hurt she was by his absence from their life.

  Darryl put his elbows on the counter and pushed his fingers through his hair, pulling at the roots. I watched a man die today. I watched the state kill him. A man he had tried to help, a man who could have been different save for a few key choices in his life. Mallorie had died alone; he hadn’t let his mother come even though she was the only person in the world who wanted to be there for him. He had died hated, and even though Darryl wasn’t a mass shooter and for all intents and purposes was respected and admired, he felt as alone as Mallorie had been on that gurney. If Darryl died today, would Clara be relieved? Even a little bit?

  “This isn’t the life I want to live,” Clara had said last night. He’d left the house and gone back to the office to prep for an upcoming hearing for a man he was trying to get off on manslaughter instead of the second-degree murder charge he probably deserved for running over his neighbor after a property line dispute. Darryl had a case of Red Bull in the trunk of his car, and this wouldn’t be the first time he’d gone a day or two without sleep. There was so much work to be done if he wanted to make partner one day. Didn’t Clara want him to be successful? Then he pictured the three partners of his firm—Perkins was currently separated from his third wife. Stone seemed to be making his second marriage work even though his wife chose to live in Chicago with their kids. Grimke hadn’t bothered to marry. He’d brought a twenty-something redhead to last year’s Christmas party, and no one dared tell him that at sixty-four years old he looked pathetic showing her off.

  Was that the life Darryl wanted to live?

  The memory of watching Mallorie’s eyes flutter closed, tears disappearing into his shaggy beard as his arms tensed and relaxed and tensed and relaxed, came to Darryl’s mind again. He didn’t know his own children the way he should. He wasn’t nurturing his wife. He was on track to attain every worldly goal a man could want. But did he want it alone? Did he want it at the expense of the other things that were important to him? At the expense of actual people? In an instant, he knew what he really wanted, and what he—for reasons he could not fully define—was hiding from.

  He took a gulp of his coffee, forgetting that the waitress had topped it off and so it was hot again. He coughed into a napkin as it burned all the way down; then he lifted his eyes back to the screen of the TV, where a middle-aged woman he recognized as the mother of one of the victims spoke into the camera, her face hard but her eyes sad. Darryl thought of the plastic bag with Mallorie’s effects in his satchel and the letter with Mom written across the front of the envelope. What had Mallorie written inside? What had he wanted her to know that he hadn’t told her during their visit on Monday?

  What would Darryl’s last words be—that he regretted hurting the people who loved him, or that he was disappointed he hadn’t made partner sooner?

  Darryl didn’t have to make partner. He didn’t even have to work in litigation and justify his defending the guilty. He told people that working as a criminal defense attorney was balance for the system, that everyone deserved a solid defense to keep the wheels of justice turning fairly. He still believed those things and fought for them, but he’d gotten a guy off on rape charges three months ago and the guy had been arrested last week for doing it again. Darryl got murderers five years instead of fifteen. Was that the mark he wanted to leave on the world? If he and Clara were willing to change their lifestyle, he could get a different job. Maybe they should go back to Tennessee and live near family again. Part of him screamed at the injustice of that—he’d left that life because he wanted something more. More wasn’t working out so good, though.

  You can choose different. He nodded in answer to the voice in his head to show he understood. Mallorie had made choices that took away his freedom. He’d lived the last years of his life as a hostage to his terrible mistakes, but Darryl’s choices were not like that. Nowhere near what Mallorie’s had been, but he could still choose different. A different choice could change everything. Even if it was hard.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket and typed out a text message to the wife who wanted to leave him. It was early, but she was up at 5:30 every day. He used to compliment the way she could get so much done in the hours most people spent in bed. She’d smiled at the compliment and shrugged her shoulders. When had he last said something like that? When had he last complimented her at all?

  Darryl: What time do the kids go to school?

  That he didn’t already know when his kids went to school further impressed upon him the changes that needed to be made. He’d never been very close to his own dad, but he’d had breakfast with him every morning before they all went off to their respective schools—Dad had taught history and coached football at the high school. Very Beaver Cleaver, that. And not impossible for Darryl to re-create if he changed his focus.

  Clara: I drop Joseph off at 7:40 and the girls at 8

  Darryl: Can I meet you at the house after you drop off the girls?

  Before he sent the text, he looked at the time on his phone. I
t wasn’t even six, which meant he had time to do better than that. He deleted what he’d written and tried again.

  Darryl: If I drop off Joseph and you drop off the girls, can we meet back at the house and talk?

  It was several seconds before Clara responded. Darryl was holding his breath. He had a nine o’clock associates meeting and back-to-back appointments from ten until five that he’d planned to prep for before anyone else came into the office. He was supposed to go out for drinks with Perkins tonight and talk strategy on another upcoming case. What if he told Perkins over drinks that he wanted out instead? Darryl got dizzy thinking about it, so he stopped. Clara. Joseph. Rose. Riley. His own sanity. Those had to be at the top of his list. What was it his mother used to say? “No worldly accomplishment will make up for failure in the home.” He wished he could talk to her—they’d always been close and if she were still alive he could call her up and say, “Mom, I could use some advice.” The thought gave him pause—he’d taken this job a few months after his mom died. Hadn’t he felt almost desperate to get away from Tennessee after that? The job had seemed like an answer to the frustrations of not moving ahead as quickly as he’d have liked at his firm back there, but maybe it was the opposite. Maybe he’d taken this job because he wanted to be overwhelmed and distant from people he loved because his mom had died and it had broken his heart more than he’d expected. Could he talk to his dad? They’d never had that kind of relationship, but . . .